


So When I Got Away, I Only Kept My Scars

by micehell



Category: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Nightwatch (1997)
Genre: AU (in that it happens after the movie and show both), Crossover, Drama, M/M, Odd, and a little kinky ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:08:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Martin saw Carl, his life had just fallen apart.  It didn't really get much better from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So When I Got Away, I Only Kept My Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Written because someone wanted Stuart Townsend and Ewan McGregor slashed together... and because my mind is just that weird. ;) 
> 
> Title from _Dead Memories_ by Slipknot.

The first time Martin saw him, Carl was dressed in a white shirt and tan slacks, all casual elegance and refined touches that told those who knew how to look that this man had money, taste. At the time, Martin was wearing the jumpsuit a young guard had given him, hesitantly handed over as if he thought Martin would leap at him and tear his throat out. A detective had taken the clothes Martin had been wearing... before. With gloves on his hands, the detective had carefully placed the clothes in plastic bags and tagged them, protecting the chain of evidence that had been splashed across Martin's own white shirt, his own tan slacks; rusty browns and reds, crusting to black in places, with rips and tears where he'd fought and screamed and done everything he could to stop it. Or, if you were the cops, looking at Martin's story with frank disbelief in their eyes, the rips and tears from where he'd fought and screamed and done everything he could to kill Katherine. It almost amused Martin how much the cops thought he'd succeeded, when Martin couldn't stop _seeing_ , playing over and over in his memory, how much he'd failed.

The first time Martin had almost failed Katherine that way, James had been there to help. It had cost James a finger and a lot of pain, but in the end he, Martin, and Katherine had walked away; damaged, but free all the same. The second time Katherine had been helpless, someone trying to kill her right in front of Martin, James had been thousands of miles away, a wedge having been driven between Martin and him by the marriage that James thought was stupid (that James had good reasons to think was stupid, not the least of which was that the groom had been too much in love with James to give him up, but had been too much of a coward to keep him, either). Without James, without the deus ex machina save in the end, Martin had only been able to struggle helplessly against the hold the... _creatures_ had on him, to scream and cry and _watch_ as they'd torn apart the woman he'd never loved.

The first time Carl had been in the same place Martin was, he'd had no one to tell him not to say a word. He'd had no one to tell him that crazy stories would only get him put away in a hospital, the suspicion against him never gone, even with forensic evidence to support his story. But Martin had still been shaking with fear, with a horribly impersonal grief, when Carl had told him what he needed to know. Saving Martin had cost James a finger, but Martin was pretty sure that Carl had had to pay an arm and a leg, even if only metaphorically. Martin had the money to pay him back, Katherine's ambitions for his career having paid well, but Carl never asked. Eventually it didn't matter, anyway.

The first time Martin had seen the sign was after Cray. Most of the marks that Cray had put on him had healed, or at least faded into light scars that James would sometimes run his teeth and tongue over, but that Katherine, touching him only in the dark, avoided. But the one on his wrist stayed clearly visible, oddly formed for what should have been glass cuts or rope burn. The first time Martin had known that it wasn't just a scar was when he'd seen its mirror on Carl's wrist, yet another parallel between them. Another connection that tied them together.

The first time Martin realized that he'd given up his old dream, the clichéd American dream, was in a small cabin in the woods, cold and dank and smelling slightly of rot. He'd been out of breath from running for his life, out of bullets in the gun he'd learned to be proficient with, and out of ideas on how he and Carl were getting away from The Horsemen this time. He'd been frightened and tired, and he'd been having intermittent visions of a full steak dinner he was so hungry, but it was strangely familiar all the same. As was Carl pulling off a last minute save that was pretty much more luck than planning, though that familiarity was far more appreciated. But as they'd taken off again, Carl's Mustang nearly on two wheels as he rounded a curve in the road, Martin realized that while he _always_ dreamed that someday they'd be free from the marks that set them apart and bound them to a fate they certainly didn't want, he _never_ dreamed of going back to what he'd been before.

The first time Carl fucked him, Martin had been having a bad day, memory sitting too close and safety sitting too far. It had been distraction and vulnerability where they couldn't afford it. Martin had also, oddly, felt like he was being disloyal to James, even though it had been years since they'd spoke, and it had been Katherine that he'd gotten killed. But when Carl had sat down next to him, it hadn't been comfort for the bad day Martin had wanted all the same. That pretty face that rarely smiled, the grief that Carl carried (both softer, yet more real than Martin's, not as muddied with guilt and lies), the firm hand that stroked down Martin's side, down his leg, down... all of it called to Martin, a heat he hadn't felt in far too long. They didn't even strip down all the way, just rucked up their shirts and pushed down their pants so that hard nipples and hard dicks could be touched and licked and pressed deep into the other's body. Martin was sure it wouldn't work at first, being years out of practice opening himself up, and having nothing to smooth the way but spit and need. He cried out in pain when Carl drove all the way in in one stroke, back arching to get free, but Carl held him still, hips moving in small rocking thrusts that eased the way, then in deep, hard thrusts that fucked him open, stealing every sound Martin made in a fierce kiss. Carl wasn't James, who'd been bigger and stronger than Martin, who sometimes hurt him as part of the games James had so loved; Martin could have gotten free if he'd wanted. But like he had with James, Martin let Carl take even what was being freely given, that need to feel _owned_ as much a part of Martin as the games had been for James, and something Katherine had never been able to give him. The hands on Martin's wrists, the weight of the body on top of him, the hard dick inside, all of it was like fire and ice in his bones, in his blood, and he shook with the pleasure of it, the need. It was Carl's face, near-feral and beautiful in orgasm, the darker side he usually hid, even from himself, but freed in that moment, that finally drove Martin over the edge. They might stay with each other because of an unwanted destiny, but they were bound to each other by a much wanted desire.

The last time Martin had seen Carl, the last time Carl had saved him, the last time Carl had held Martin and fucked him until they both were shaking with the need... hadn't happened yet, but Martin knew some day it would come. In the meantime, he put a full clip in his gun, put his feet out the Mustang's window, and let Carl drive just like he had the first time.

/story


End file.
